The Reik
Write the first paragraph of your article here. The Reik the Reik, or the celestial kingdom, was an empire that stretched across Mordica's largest continent, the Eastern land of Muliel. It was ruled by a society of mages under the wisdom of the Empress, ruler of the last four centuries. During the time of the Cataclysm, the party discovered the Empress's identity as one of the fabled Muse, and her task of protecting of the sacred Anchors which bound the world. the Reik was a mageocracy, and sorcery was integrated into most ways of life, from weather and crop control to civilizing the wilds to the comforts of daily life for most of the citizenry. IT was also a strict meritocracy that did not abide weakness, having a martial and disciplined culture as well as a lavish and exotic cultivation. For most of its history it was involved in a cold war against the western nations of Adoran, stifled in trade it suffered alienation from the outside world. despite its magical proliferation the society changed very little, and for centuries life devolved into little more than perfecting routine and presentation once the empire ceased to expand beyond its waters. this was found to be caused by the celestial boundaries, great dragons who kept the borders of the empire safe, both from invasion adn expansion. the mageocracy was under sacred oath not to defy or kill these great dragons, themselves emissaries of the Great Celestial Heavens (the Horiocula). For this reason the Reik kept a blissful declining society in stasis for over three centuries, until the time of the Falstaff. The air-war from Falstaff's Weiff fleet provoked a short lived war, where the Reik's defenders, under permission from the great dragons, fought the until-then unopposed Falstaff to a standstill-their high technology and mage corps were unable to overcome the sheer quantity and skill of the Reik sorceror armies. delegates on behalf of the governor of Adoran made formal treaty with teh empress in the third year of the struggle, and since then the Falstaff looked to southern borders for expansion, while the Reik waited for the inevitable return to conflict once they felt they had been sufficiently reinforced from their distant homeworld. Geography & Features see . The Reik covers an entire continent, one encompassing several temperate climes and zones, everything from tundra to tropical desert, from snow capped peaks to arboreal forest. Government & Society Such a vast land and great population of millions could only be ordered by a society of mages. the empire was divided into 15 provinces, each ruled by a daimyo, a mage-general of the empress. however the empress believed government reflecetd the needs of the people, and so instituted a second element, a grand parliament representing virtually every settlement of the empire. since this number was obscenely large, they had to vie for sittings to be heard by the empress, and her travelling court and attendances at one of the great daiymos numbered in the tens of thousands. the parliament was divided between prefectures (represetning towns, provinces, regions) and the people (1000 citizens to a delegate). the empress held court in a different province every month, and delegates and prefectures alike competed and struggled in the meritocratic society to be present, of whom the empress would personally see few and her high court hear pleas of several hundred, the daimyo of the province traditionally 'hearing' the rest (in teh form of impersoanlized mass decrees in practice). The Empress the party discovered the Empress was secretly one of the Muse, possessed by the last emperor of the Reik who died heirless. As the Muse must be possessed by their nature, he placed her as possession of the empire, and she has ruled that which rules her in perfect harmony. her oracular powers, and the nature of balance in teh Muse made her a consumate ruler and check agaisnt hte ambitions of a mage-led warlike culture, raising elegance, peace and harmony above conquest and power for most of the Reik. few know her secret, and they in turn saw the benefit as the last Emperor did, of a consumate servant of the people as steward for the throne. Sitas the ancinet society of the sorceror infiltrated even the sorcerous rigor of the magic kingdom. Though discovered by the Empress herself, she allowed them to operate in search of their goals, so that a lasting defeat could be struck against the Sitas warlocks and their lich masters. Their most ambitious rose through magical cunning and the worst underhanded tactics, using magic to compromise and undermine opponents, and though good mages died the Empress allowed it, even as he attained rank as one of her high sorcerors, then carefully preventing his cohorts from joining him in her high circle. The conspiracy came to fruition when Manus Kala, the leader of the Black Hands, had his gang contract Wolf the Thief in the Reik to steal the Empress's sacred Anchor, leading the party to pursue it on board her majestic abeyance, the Grand Traveler. After defeating Wolf and his psionic henchman Wanev, they presented the 'anchor' to the Empress, only to have it stolen by her high warlock, who teleported away. AFter initial shock and anger, the Empress revealed it was a fraud, and the true anchor was on her person the whole while. This led to the death of the high warlock by his enraged lich masters, and the Reik shortly purged every Sitas plant with the Empress's divine oracular knowledge. The Grand Traveler one of the wonders of the Reik was a great magical traveling caravan, through tunnels and paths constructed throughout the Reik, a network by which the Empress and her immediate court could reach any locale quickly. It was warded by the most powerful magics in the Reik, virtually undetectable and unable to be boarded or impeded magically. The Traveler also hosted the personal royal treasury, and so was regarded as the most valuable cargo in the Reik, and perhaps the world. This lured the master thief Wolf and his gang to pursue it, under secret information divulged by Manus, his source being his own captive Muse. The party was able to recapture the Traveler only after learning the one oversight of its design was protection against Psychics, an extinct art by most reckoning and virtually absent from the Reik (themselves purged by Pakk over the years). the one exception was Wanev, whose primary power was deception, able to shield his midn from detection, the rarest of all Psychic skills, and thus able to maste rhte arts over his long life. The party used devices from psychics of centuries past to catch up to the traveler, with the aid of a venerable psychic from Kero's time, and secured the traveler by defeating Wolf and his crew. the Storm the Reik was not entirely at peace at any point. The eastern empire did constant warfare with the Storm, as areas of high magical concentration formed weak barriers between the chaotic universe of the demons and Mordica. Sorceror knights of the Reik battled never-ending incursions of demons continuing their ancient war, and on rare occassion acted as intermediaries between the divine celestial heavens (the Horiocula and servitor races) and the more civil demons of the Storm. These took the form of intrigue and theft or assassination by either side, as Mordica was the middleground between the two immortal forces. The effect of this was also rare infiltrations of Reik society by demons guised as humans, and during the short war between the Reik and Falstaff some smuggled themselves over as regular infantry, spreading through the world beyond the seal of the great dragons. The Celestial Heavens the relation between the Reik and the Heavens was informal, but direct physical and meta contact was not unheard of. The Horiocula would send spiritual messengers or dispatch supernatural beings to carry out business with the mortal world, often relating to keeping the balance of peace or maintaining intelligence on world affairs. On rare occasion they conducted warfare with their natural enemies, the Gen. Section heading Write the second section of your article here. Don't forget to add a category, to help people find the article.